


The Assassin and the Accomplice

by Zeborah



Series: The Time-Traveller's Ex-Husband [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: De-fridging, Regeneration, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeborah/pseuds/Zeborah
Summary: Hotch pursues Foyet into his old house, expecting to find Haley dead. Her blood is there - but her body isn't. Instead he's confronted by a young Black woman with a British accent who claims, against all evidence, to be Haley. As the investigation uncovers more Brooks family history than Hotch ever knew, can the BAU work out who she really is, and what she's done with Haley's body?
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Haley Hotchner
Series: The Time-Traveller's Ex-Husband [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994980
Kudos: 10





	The Assassin and the Accomplice

**Author's Note:**

> Look I mean I'm just still mad about Criminal Minds fridging Haley and I'm also still mad about Doctor Who fridging both kid-Melody and grown-up Mels. I hold grudges like this for a long time, and grudges lead to fix-it fic.
> 
> [Completed story in an uncompleted series. I'll post the parts I have rather than sitting on them in the vain hopes of one day magically finishing the rest.]

Hotch was creeping through the house, gun and torch drawn, breathing rough, desperately blinking away ill-timed tears. The blood led to the stairs. He'd just turned his torch upwards when a brighter light swelled to fill the stairwell from above.

A muffled, "What the--?" broke the silence and got his heart pounding even harder than it already had been: that was Foyet's voice.

He started up the stairs into the flickering, almost blinding light. He had to force himself not to take them at a run, and breathe through his mouth so he could listen. Foyet added, "What are you--?" and broke off again. He sounded almost perturbed. What could possibly perturb the Boston Reaper?

The mysterious light was starting to dim as Hotch reached the landing. He turned. The flickers pulled back into his old bedroom as if the light were an elastic band stretched too far.

"Wow!" exclaimed a woman's voice. His stomach clenched: it was a British accent; not Haley.

But he was almost there, gun raised and aimed and ready as Foyet shouted in fury, "But I _killed_... y--you?"

The word ended on a bewildered squeak, and Hotch burst in on it. He saw the shape, the gun spinning towards him, and he shot. He kept shooting until Foyet was on the floor in a tangle of curtains.

Then he turned his aim to the other person in the room. It was a young Black woman, her hair a mass of long tight curls. For a moment she seemed to glow, but that must be just a trick of the sunlight suddenly streaming in the window, and quickly faded. She wore a plaid shirt covered in blood, and stumbled back from him in one shoe, one bloody bare foot. "Aaron," she gasped, wide-eyed, "it's me!"

He snatched a breath, holding his trigger finger ready. "Who are you?"

"W--what do you mean?"

He didn't have time for this. Her hands were empty, and her tight-fitting clothes afforded no space for a hidden weapon. "Don't move," he told her and, keeping her firmly in his peripheral vision, turned back to Foyet.

He pulled the curtain quickly off the body; tossed the gun safely out of everyone's way. He turned the body over-- Saw bullets lodged in a bullet-proof vest-- Saw hazel eyes, teeth savagely bared, a fist aimed at his face-- Saw stars--

He'd lost his gun. Foyet was running. As Hotch scrambled for his backup weapon the woman dove into Foyet's path with a fierce, " _Don't_ you dare."

Foyet reared back from her as if snatching his hand from a hotplate. "I already _killed_ you!" he growled again, drawing out a switchblade, and--

Hotch fired.

Only one shot this time -- through the back of his head -- but that was enough. He fell, and stayed down.

The woman clutched the doorframe, breathing hard and absently kicking off her remaining shoe. "Is he--"

Hotch cleared the knife, and checked for other weapons. Foyet didn't move this time, and didn't seem likely to again.

He stood up and faced the woman. "Where's Haley?"

"Aaron -- _I'm_ Haley! I had to dye my hair--"

"You dyed your skin too?"

"My--" Her hand lifted towards her cheek, then stopped halfway and she stared at it. "My hand is..." Abruptly she strode to the mirror on the other side of the room, and stared into _that_. "I'm-- Am I speaking with a British accent? Oh, wow. He did kill me, and now I'm British, and Nan really wasn't kidding about the curls. How am I going to explain this to Jack? --Oh my God." She whirled back to Hotch. "He went and hid--"

He lifted his gun again. " _Don't_ move."

She'd apparently done with feigning bewilderment. Instead this time she went for a cold fury. "Aaron," she gritted in low tones, "can you just _stop_ doing the job for _one minute_ and think about what your son needs?"

Those oh-so-familiar remonstrations for a moment made his mouth dry. Then thankfully from below he heard Morgan's shout: "Hotch?"

"Up here!" he called back. He told the woman, "What my son needs is his mother. Are you going to tell me where she is?"

" _I'm_ his mother!" she said in frustration.

That was a no. And he heard more than Morgan's feet pounding up the stairs. "In here. Foyet's dead; I've got an unidentified female accomplice--"

"Accomplice?" she echoed indignantly.

Morgan, coming in with Prentiss and Dave close behind, asked, "Are Haley and Jack...?"

"I don't know yet. Get her out of here; I'm going to search."

"Aaron! _Aaron!_ "

*

He found Jack safe in the very chest he'd hoped the boy would remember to hide in. But of Haley the only sign was the blood leading up to the bedroom where Foyet and the woman had been found. And on the mystery woman's own clothes. As far as they could tell from the crimescene, she'd been _lying_ in it.

And from what Jack said when Hotch talked to him safely at Quantico...

He left Jack in the conference room with JJ and Reid, and joined Morgan in the bullpen. "She was wearing Haley's clothes."

Morgan's eyes widened in dismay. "You're sure?"

"I asked Jack what Haley was wearing today. I mean he's only four years old and he's worried about his Mom..." So was he, except that 'worried' was an understatement. He felt like he was going out of his mind. But he had to focus. "He also said her hair is black now. Short and straight," he clarified, as if there'd been any doubt that it might be, say, long and curly.

"I'll update the description for the search," Morgan said. "Did Jack see anyone else?"

He shook his head. "He only saw Haley and Foyet. But I agree, there must be another accomplice or we'd have found her by now."

"We'll canvas the neighbours again. Maybe someone saw another car."

While Morgan dealt with that, Hotch joined Dave and Prentiss outside the interview room and brought them up to speed. The clothes in question were already in evidence, but forensics was going to take some time. Garcia had already called them with the fingerprint results -- or rather, the lack thereof. Whoever the mystery woman was, she wasn't in the system.

Hotch watched through the one-way glass. The woman, wearing a cheap Bureau-issued sweater and slacks, was sitting at the table -- cuffed to it, a reasonable precaution given the company she kept. She was staring at her hands, front and back. After a few minutes of this she wriggled herself enough leeway to pat her hair, and pull a handful of it in front of her face to investigate the spring of its curls. Then abruptly she dropped it to dab at damp eyes.

Hotch felt his mouth dry again, and swallowed deliberately. Lots of women dried their eyes like that, to avoid smearing their makeup. It didn't mean anything.

Of course Dave noticed his reaction. "How are you doing?"

He gritted his teeth and said, "I just want to know where they've taken Haley."

"You realise, even if we find her--"

"We'll find her," he snapped. Dave let his silence answer that outburst for him. Hotch wrestled his temper into submission, and finally added, "And I realise." He'd heard the gunshot; worse, seen the blood. There'd been a lot of it. Maybe it had been fake -- Foyet had faked his own death once -- but Hotch couldn't figure out why he'd want to.

He just also couldn't figure out why Foyet would have accomplices to take the body away.

After a careful pause, Prentiss asked, "What happened in there?"

Hotch shut his eyes: less to remember, more because he was _tired_. "Haley's and Foyet's cars were there. There was no other movement. I went in, I cleared the ground floor. I headed upstairs, and there was this... light."

"What kind of light?" Dave asked.

"I don't know." He made himself think. "Probably the sun as the bedroom curtains were opened and closed again. Foyet looked like he'd been trying to hide behind them, but... something startled him. I heard him say something, and the woman sounded surprised too, and then he said, 'But I killed you'. He said it to her later too: 'I already killed you,' as if he was furious that she wasn't dead. Anyway, that's when I shot him. Both times."

"Two times is the charm," Dave said drily.

He lifted his eyebrows in lieu of answer. At least Foyet was dead: that was one less threat to worry about. Haley... might be too, but he wasn't going to believe that until he saw her body.

"The thing is," he resumed at last, looking back into the interview room, "this woman acted like I should have recognised her. She looked surprised to see herself in the mirror, and she kept insisting that she was..." He didn't want to say the name in connection with her. "Jack's mother."

"She gave me the same story while she was changing," Prentiss said. "She called me Emily -- she knew you and I didn't get on when I first joined the team -- she even recited the whole conversation Haley and I had when I met her at the Auld Dubliner, up to you taking her out to the dance floor."

Hotch frowned. "Word for word?"

"Well, not Reid levels of photographic memory but... it was like she was there."

"She wasn't." Even Reid hadn't been at that table. It had been Hotch, Haley, Prentiss and Garcia, and an hour later three of them had been deep in a case that had eclipsed all else for days -- in some ways for months. But maybe Haley had talked about it with her sister, or a friend. "Occasionally erotomania expresses in an attempt to impersonate someone, to try to take over their life. If this woman managed to befriend Haley, and Foyet found out about it..." He trailed off.

Dave finished for him: "And then got really confused about it?"

He was already shaking his head. "He was under a lot of stress, but not that much. Unless he tried to kill both of them, but she didn't look injured." He glanced a question at Prentiss.

"She doesn't have a scratch on her. But... what if it was the other way around? If she found out about Foyet -- or at least was surprised by him."

"You think she was already in the house?" Dave asked.

"It makes sense," she said. "If she was trying to take over Haley's life, moving into her house would be irresistible. Then Haley, Jack and Foyet arrive. She sees Foyet-- uh, shoot Haley." She tripped awkwardly over the word, as if substituting it for something stronger.

Dave caught up the narrative for her. "Foyet carries Haley to the bedroom, but then he leaves again to close all the curtains in the house. That gives our stalker her chance. She dresses in Haley's clothes--"

"Her partner takes the body," Hotch put in.

Dave nodded. "And when Foyet comes back to wait for you, it's dark, he's not looking too closely. But then she moves or makes a noise..."

"It makes sense," Hotch agreed.

"So what's the partner's motivation?" Dave asked, eyes lifted in eloquent suggestion of one possibility. Erotomania was usually a solitary endeavour. It was barely possible a partner was just along for the ride -- or perhaps he'd cast himself as the Aaron to her Haley.

"Hotch," Prentiss said with a grimace, "maybe you shouldn't go in there."

It was literally the first rule of dealing with erotomania: don't let them have any contact with their target. But this wasn't a good day to follow the rulebook. "She's contained. We need her to talk, and she'll talk to me."

*

He walked into the interrogation room empty-handed and stopped in the doorway. The woman's gaze was immediately on him, and the hard part was to let himself look as desperately lost as he felt.

"Aaron," she said: her voice and eyes alike were pleading. He didn't let himself answer; she swallowed. "Is Jack okay?"

He didn't want to tell her a thing about Jack. But he needed to build a rapport with her if he was going to find her partner. "He's safe. Shaken," he admitted.

"What have you told him, about...?" She gestured, with her dark brown hand, to her tightly coiled black hair.

He looked away, and shut the door. "The truth is," he said, slowly joining her at the table, "I don't know what to tell him." He looked at his own clasped hands, mirroring hers, and made himself lift his eyes back to hers. "I don't understand what happened there myself."

She gave a wry smile that was too familiar on that strange face. "You don't believe me at all."

"Convince me," he suggested.

She looked up at the ceiling, just like Haley did when she was trying not to cry, and took a moment to get her voice (her British accent) under control. "I asked Sam to send you that video of Jack in the park," she said. "Did you get it?"

Who could have known about that video? Garcia, again, but if she'd recognised this woman she'd have said something. Could the woman have got to Haley in WitSec? Or had Haley said something to Foyet, before realising he wasn't Sam's friend, and this woman had simply overheard it? "I got it," he said neutrally.

"Jack was wearing a Mr Silly shirt," she said. "He wanted to make me smile. And today he picked his Captain America shirt because he wanted to be a hero. Just like his Daddy."

The words came with all the weight of old recriminations. This had to be someone Haley had confided in: someone close. They should check the mother-and-child groups she'd attended with Jack; the library; the doctor's--

"Do you remember that old pirate hat?" she tried.

It was all about his relationship with Haley. "What did we have for dinner that night?" he countered.

"Roast beef and some screwtop red wine," she said at once, relaxing a fraction at his playing along. "And Jack took an hour to get to sleep. Then we looked at your old yearbook on the sofa and..." Her eyes flicked to the one-way glass and back, eliding all the intimacies that had followed that. "And in the middle of the night you got a phone call."

All about their relationship, and how the BAU had got in its way. Someone Haley had confided in -- or maybe they'd got it wrong, and this was the partner of the person she'd confided in. "Just like the day I went to Milwaukee," he said. She stilled. "Morgan phoned me that morning, but someone else phoned later on. Who was it?"

The defiant look she gave him was horribly like the look Haley had given him then, even as her mouth worked in disbelief that he'd ask. "It was a hang-up."

"But they called your cell too, and you checked your missed calls later," he said, willing her to catch and believe that _you_. Keeping his voice calm, almost gentle. "I don't... care anymore, just tell me the name and we can sort all of this out."

She let out a voiceless laugh and blinked again at the ceiling. After a moment chewing her lip, she said, "Morgan read me my rights. That means I get a phone call, right?"

Dammit. But she hadn't asked for a lawyer. He got his phone out and opened a new text to Garcia. "Who do you want to call?"

The number she gave him had a New York area code. Not Sean's, unless Sean had changed numbers without telling him. Which would explain a lot, come to think of it. He sent the number to Garcia and waited.

The woman looked at the phone, looked at his face, and looked away with another humourless laugh. The silence stretched. Tightly she asked, "Is Sam really okay?"

He weighed his answer and decided to see how she'd react to the admission. "No. Sam's dead."

The grief creasing her face was immediate and genuine, and was conquered only with an effort. "You lied," she said flatly.

"Yes."

"You didn't want me to be afraid of-- of Foyet." That made her shudder. Hotch had to brace himself not to do the same, especially when she continued, "He had his gun on the back of my neck. I could feel him... enjoying it. I let him. I just wanted to stall him long enough for Jack to hide. And then... then I woke up."

Hotch held himself very still. If he reacted in the slightest-- Probably Prentiss or Dave would come and haul him out of the room. "Woke up in what way?"

"In every way." She lifted her hands again in wonder. "They're still tingling. Aaron, I know this is... literally impossible to believe, but he killed me, and I regenerated. My body just had to change to do it."

Luckily his phone rescued him from having to respond to that. Garcia's reply read, "Hawkesbury Ltd, children's book publisher. Running employee and author rec-- Call me?"

Call her indeed. He stood and strode out.

"Aaron, just _talk_ to her. She knows exactly what's happening. She-- Tell Jack I'm okay!" she finished desperately as he closed the door.

*

Hotch was already calling Garcia on speakerphone, all the better to avoid Dave and Prentiss's expressive looks. "Hawkesbury was the publisher for Amelia Jessica Williams, which is a nom de plume for Amy Brooks. Haley's grandmother. Jessica was named after her."

"Right," Garcia said, sounding simultaneously relieved that she didn't have to tell that part of the story, and nervous that there was clearly more to tell, "but there's some serious hinkiness with birth certificates, like a whole rabbit warren of hinkiness and I don't know if you want me to go down that hole or--"

He cut in, "I know Amy and Rory couldn't have children, so they adopted Haley's father in 1946 and two more boys in the next few years."

"Believe it or not that's the clean and tidy part. And I can't find birth records for her and Rory, but they must have been born in something like 1910 so that's not the hinky thing either."

"What's the hinky thing, Garcia?" Dave asked on Hotch's behalf.

"The hinky thing is in two parts. Part one is Haley's birth certificate looks a lot like the birth certificates the FBI used to make for cover stories, and by 'a lot' I mean it's from the same hospital whose records got destroyed in a fire and it's signed by the same person; and part two is there's another record and it's been sealed since 1979."

"Unseal it," Hotch ordered.

"I just knew you were going to say that," she said, sounding less happy about it than usual. "It is a...nother birth certificate. Same dodgy hospital, same dodgy signature, but this is for a Harmony Brooks. Born 1963, to... Rory and Amy Brooks."

They all did the calculations in their head. They'd have been in their early fifties, besides being supposedly infertile; whereas Haley's father would have been in his late teens. Just the kind of age to get a girlfriend pregnant who wouldn't be in a position to raise the baby.

"So what are we thinking?" Prentiss asked: "they had a friend in the Bureau who helped them cover up the family scandal?"

"And then helped them cover up the cover up," Dave said. "What happened in 1979, and where's Harmony now?"

"I've never heard of her," Hotch said, still calculating years, "but I'd say there's a good chance we've got her daughter in the room next door. Garcia, I need you to look up one more thing. In 2008 we took a case in Milwaukee. That day someone phoned my house and a minute later they phoned Haley's cellphone."

"Phone records that old are going to take a while--"

"Let me know when you've got them," he said, and hung up.

"Hotch," Prentiss stopped him again. He looked at her -- he was _not_ leaving this interrogation to someone else -- but she only said, "In Catholic tradition, St Anne was old and infertile when she became pregnant with Mary."

Dave gave a thoughtful nod. "And Mary was a teenage mother."

"If this woman was conceived in 1979 she'd be thirty years old now. Jesus was meant to be thirty-three, but... it would explain why she thinks she's literally risen from the dead."

It was a lot to fit into an already crowded profile, but what else explained all the many, seriously disturbing, facts they'd unearthed? He nodded and steeled himself to go back inside.

*

"You should be with Jack," the woman told him tiredly.

Or, no. Her tone was resigned, but there was nothing tired about her. Hotch studied her as he sat down again. If she was thirty, it was a very youthful thirty. She looked in the peak of health and fitness. If she'd ever lost a night's sleep in her life to stress, it hadn't left a wrinkle or trace of bags under her eyes. She brimmed with energy -- and with frustration. He could use that. He clasped his hands again on the table and stated: "Harmony Brooks."

Her face took on a wry smile. "You know about Harmony."

"I know she was born in 1963 and disappeared when you were six."

The wry smile somehow turned even wryer as she shook her head. "You really need to talk to Nan."

"Why can't you tell me?"

"She's the story-teller."

"Yes, but she also lives in New York, so the question is how long do you want this to take?"

She faltered at that. He gave her his hardest prosecutorial we-just-caught-you-at-a-crimescene-wearing-the-victim's-clothes-and-blood look, and she said hopelessly, "It involves time travel."

Time travel. She was either completely delusional or a hell of an actor; either way this was a waste of his time. "You're right," he said, standing up: "I should be with--"

A noise cut him off. A noise, a rush of air, a flickering of blue that solidified with a whooping roar into a... box. A blue wooden box, the size of a phone box, sitting suddenly flush against the interview table.

"Wow," said the UnSub in the same delighted awe he'd heard from the bedroom two hours ago, as Hotch tried to make his brain process the appearance of a solid box from thin air. "She wasn't kidding about the blue box either."

And a gangly man appeared from around the other side of the box, in brown suit and red bow tie. "Hi. --Oh, no need for that," he scolded Hotch's gun, "I'm just here for a prisoner transfer. I've got my credentials right... here. There you go. Now, River Song?"

"You've got the wrong room," Hotch said tightly, gun ready if not aimed. Credentials or not, this was wrong, and Agent Smith's badge number was slipping out of his head even as he tried to memorise it.

"Oh, uh... Melody Pond?"

"No--"

"Harmony Brooks?" the woman suggested brightly.

"What are you doing around there?" Smith demanded, ducking back around the box.

"Handcuffs," she explained, lifting them.

"Typical." Smith reappeared smugly at her side with what must be a miniature laser cutter in hand: the handcuffs dropped off and even as Hotch aimed his gun -- even as Dave and Prentiss burst in the door with theirs -- Smith dragged her back behind the box.

"Tell Jack I love him and I'll be back," she called over her shoulder.

Hotch and Dave took a side each of the box and met at the back. There was a door; Smith and the woman were already inside. Sharing a glance, Hotch readied to open it, Dave to fire--

But with a whooping roar the box flickered into a blue they could see Prentiss through; a rush of air, and a noise fading to silence.

They were all very slow to lower their guns. Hotch found himself checking both ceiling and floor for holes or trapdoors: there were none.

"It... looks like the tape's still running," Prentiss suggested tentatively with a glance at the security cameras. But it wasn't clear what they could do with it even if it was.

Hotch walked through where the box had been and picked up the handcuffs. They were cold, and undamaged. Just unlocked. And the woman who'd been in them was gone. He tried to make sense of it: "She said..." She'd said time travel. She'd said regeneration. She'd said she was Haley.

"Aaron," Dave said, first to holster his gun, "I'm calling time out. Go be with Jack; let us figure out what just happened here."

Weakly he argued, "Her family will have questions."

"And as soon as we've got answers, you'll be the first to know." He put a hand on Hotch's shoulder and squeezed. "Take your son home."


End file.
